In this Jan. 17, 2014, photo, President Barack Obama Talks about National Security Agency surveillance at the Justice Department in Washington.

A surveillance bill aiming to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans' phone records passed the House on Thursday, despite privacy advocates calling it “weak,” “watered-down" and "dangerously broad."

Known as the USA Freedom Act, the bill follows President Barack Obama's January call on Congress to end the NSA's bulk collection of U.S. citizens' phone call information.

The bill, which passed the House 303-121, requires that American phone companies keep records of calls made on their networks for 18 months and let the NSA search their contents for ties to terrorism investigations.

However, the bill provides no protection for foreigners — and the provisions to protect Americans have been “extensively watered down,” according to a report from Amnesty International.

“We supported the original USA Freedom act, even though it didn’t do much for non-US persons,” Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty International's Security & Human Rights Program told Mashable after Thursday's vote.

Good news: House passes USA Freedom Act. Bad news: Gutted it before doing so. Much work to do in the Senate. #NSA@ACLU@EFF#tlot#privacy

He described the original version as “a good step to end bulk collection.” However, in its current version, it's not even clear that this bill does that at all, Johnson said. He added that Congress left a lot of "wiggle room" in the bill — something he said is a real problem.

"Where there is vagueness in a law, you can count on the administration to exploit it," Johnson said.

"Where there is vagueness in a law, you can count on the administration to exploit it," Johnson said.

However, Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, took a more positive view of the bill.

"While far from perfect, this bill is an unambiguous statement of congressional intent to rein in the out-of-control NSA," she said in a statement. "While we share the concerns of many — including members of both parties who rightly believe the bill does not go far enough — without it we would be left with no reform at all, or worse, a House Intelligence Committee bill that would have cemented bulk collection of Americans’ communications into law."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation simply called it "a weak attempt at NSA reform."

BREAKING: USA FREEDOM Act passes the House. It's a weak attempt at NSA reform. We're working for a stronger version in the Senate.

“The ban on bulk collection was deliberately watered down to be ambiguous and exploitable,” said Center for Democracy and Technology Senior Counsel Harley Geiger. “We withdrew support for USA FREEDOM when the bill morphed into a codification of large-scale, untargeted collection of data about Americans with no connection to a crime or terrorism.”

And Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch, said, “This so-called reform bill won’t restore the trust of Internet users in the US and around the world. Until Congress passes real reform, U.S. credibility and leadership on Internet freedom will continue to fade.”

Silicon Valley weighs in

Some of America's largest tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, AOL, Dropbox, Twitter, Yahoo and LinkedIn, all warned that the bill created an “unacceptable loophole that could enable the bulk collection of internet users' data," the Guardian reported.

Congress reacts

Representative Justin Amash (R-MI 3rd), an original cosponsor of the Freedom Act, pulled his support this week and voted "no" on Thursday. In a Facebook postthat was published just before it passed, Amash said "the revised bill that makes its way to the House floor this morning doesn't look much like the Freedom Act."

This morning's bill maintains and codifies a large-scale, unconstitutional domestic spying program. It claims to end "bulk collection" of Americans' data only in a very technical sense: The bill prohibits the government from, for example, ordering a telephone company to turn over all its call records every day.

But the bill was so weakened in behind-the-scenes negotiations over the last week that the government still can order—without probable cause—a telephone company to turn over all call records for "area code 616" or for "phone calls made east of the Mississippi." The bill green-lights the government's massive data collection activities that sweep up Americans' records in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

As the bill heads to the Senate, Amash's spokesman Will Adams said the congressman is encouraged by recent statements from Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that show he wants to see additional privacy protections in the Senate's version of the bill. He said the congressman will continue to work with his allies in the Senate. After the bill passed on Thursday, Leahy's office issued a statement saying the senator supported the House of Representatives "for taking an important step towards reforming our nation’s surveillance authorities," but was "disappointed" that the Freedom Act doesn't include some of the reforms contained in its original version. "I will continue to push for these important reforms when the Senate Judiciary Committee considers the USA FREEDOM Act next month," he said. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.